Let Them Make Cake

Ben Wildsmith 

Local Facebook pages are a bit of an obsession of mine. After you’ve waded through all the dog-poo-related content, A CHILD could have stepped it for God’s sake, there’s a lot of kindness on show when people are struggling.

The instinct to help is a beautiful facet of humanity, and facilitating it is the least toxic aspect of social media.

It’s fair to say, though, that when a middle-aged English couple showed up in Pontypridd on Wednesday for half an hour’s work experience making Welsh cakes in the market, local sentiments weren’t 100% behind them.

Whilst Wills and Kate got to grips with the flour and sultanas, currant affairs[1] had conspired to make this innocent visit to Ponty a controversial one.

When Plaid Cymru brought an amendment to the Crown Estate Bill in Westminster, proposing that revenues from the royal estates in Wales be administered by the Welsh Government, it couldn’t be accused of nationalist opportunism.

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Labour policy

This is official Labour policy in the Senedd and a settled feature of devolution in Scotland. So, the spectacle of Welsh Labour MPs voting against the amendment, particularly as the Tories abstained, was perverse.

It comes as no surprise, though, does it? Labour ‘at both ends of the M4’ was defined in Jo Stevens’ first week in office when she suggested that her mandate represented the ‘people of Wales’ more meaningfully that those won by all sitting members in the Senedd combined.

So, anyone paying attention is aware of the contempt with which Labour in Westminster holds the devolved institution that was once its cherished achievement.

When they are starving us for cash in other ways, over HS2 for instance, most of us are so used to their attitude that it doesn’t even sting. This though: defending royal lucre that Scotland receives yet we don’t, seems emblematic of the moral decline of the Labour party here and an unforgivable insult.

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Derided

Anybody objecting to the party’s trajectory over the last forty-odd years has been derided as unrealistic, sentimental and childishly idealistic. People held their tongues when Neil Kinnock refused to back the strike and looked on mutely as the former scourge of aristocratic rule was swaddled in ermine down London way.

They observed the absurd rise of Owen Smith to establishment-feted puppet and subsequent return to corporate life after Jeremy Corbyn thrashed him. We’ve seen them ennoble barrow-boy capitalists like Alan Sugar, become enthralled to sinister Machiavellians like Peter Mandelson, and be complicit in the deaths of over a million Iraqis for reasons nobody believes.

Throughout all of that, Wales, and the Valleys in particular, have turned out for this party as a matter of tribal allegiance, perhaps even faith. Mark Drakeford used to occasionally whisper about disestablishing the Welsh party from its UK parent. What a thing that might have been!

It was just a mess of pottage though, like everything else the party dangles in front of this abused nation it was all sizzle and no steak.

The opinions about the royal visit on Facebook were split between people who were viscerally angry about them setting foot here, and those who find that sort of rhetoric rude and unseemly.

Clicking through to the profiles of people commenting revealed that most objectors were Reform UK supporters, whilst those who liked the royal couple were Labour.

Plaid Cymru

Plaid Cymru did well to platform the Crown Estate issue this week and general discontent at the status quo should be to their advantage. Where, though, is the urgency?

Evidently, Wales is on the cusp of political upheaval as Labour’s Welsh credit card finally gets refused. If that momentum cannot be harnessed by a party that explicitly puts ‘Wales First’ then we are unviable as a nation.

It is unthinkable to me that thuddingly stupid dolts like Lee Anderson can possibly express any facet of our political culture.

Plaid needs to become an insurgency, it needs not to be polite, and it needs to do so right now.

[1] Remind me to give you a pay rise, this is exceptional stuff- Ed.